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Soccer's roller coaster ride

July 17, 2009 04:06 PM | Posted by   Ron Kuipers  

Ron Kuipers is a writer from Oakville, Ont., who has been coaching and teaching young kids how to play soccer for several years.

My son plays under-14 house league soccer. My daughter plays under-11 house league soccer. I coach both teams so we’re either practising or playing a game on Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night.

I mention this because when you’re actively participating in this much soccer, you’re bound to see a little bit of everything which is what I saw this past week.

I witnessed some great moments that provided players and parents with uplifting stories they won’t soon forget.

I also saw some not-so-great moments which reminded me that we still have some work to do when it comes to the ‘fair play’ code of conduct for a few of the adults.

Yes, it was a roller coaster ride of emotion featuring the ups and the downs of minor soccer in Canada. Here’s just one example of what the pitch provided this week.

The U14 boy’s downside

I’m going to start with the downside because then the upside will make much more sense.

So there’s about 10 minutes left in my son’s game and we’re losing 3-2. It’ s been an evenly matched contest and the other team is hoping to hang on for the win.

Two dads have wandered behind their own goal and are now barking out instructions to both the 'keeper and some of their players, which they shouldn’t be doing at all. You can bark all you want from the sidelines but not from behind the net.

Anyway, during this period of time, I heard one of the Dad’s telling his team’s goalie to ‘take your time’ after a save. Some of our players heard him tell the goalie to ‘tie your cleats’ after another save.

Really? Tell the kid to waste time like the pros do? Hey Dad! Here’s a newsflash for you! This wasn’t a professional game or a qualifier for 2010 in South Africa and there wasn’t any money on the line. This was simply another boy’s house league game which was well-played and it was going to provide us with an exciting finish and it certainly didn’t need to end with the un-sportsmanlike suggestions from you.

How about letting the kids make their own decisions and let the players determine the outcome based on their own sense of fair and ethical play and not based on the ridiculous instructions from some overzealous parents who continue to forget how to behave properly at a kids’ house league soccer game?

The U14 boy’s upside

We had a call-up for the game on Tuesday night. He’s my son’s friend who normally plays just one division lower in the same U14 age group.

Most players who are called-up to play for the next division or for an older age group are very excited about the opportunity to strut their stuff at a higher level. My son’s friend was no exception. He was happy to be playing with his buddy on the street and with a few other familiar faces.

And that brings us back to the late stages of our game. We’re losing 3-2 and now there are about 7 or 8 minutes to go and we’ve got the Dads behind the net telling the goalie to waste time. So who do you think scored the tying goal for our side?

That’s right, our call-up buries one from in close to make it 3-3! Now he’s getting mobbed by his new teammates and it’s a wonderful time for a kid who loves his soccer. He might not be a regular on our team but he managed to provide us with one of the more memorable moments from this season.

The final outcome

This story, by the way, doesn’t end there because the game wasn’t over yet.

With about two minutes to go, we scored again to make it 4-3 and that was the final score.

We scored two late goals to win the game, shortly after that parent started telling his goalie to waste some time. Hey Dad! If you’d kept your mouth shut, your team would have had some of that ‘wasted time’ back which they could’ve used to try and tie the game back up.

‘What goes around, comes around’ never made more sense to me than it did on Tuesday night.

Kind of like a roller coaster ride.

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